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Democrats Deliver String of Stinging Defeats in Senate

Elizabeth Warren's victory in Massachusetts was one in a string of Republican setbacks.Credit
Evan McGlinn for The New York Times

Democrats snatched Republican Senate seats in Indiana and Massachusetts on Tuesday, averted what once were considered likely defeats in Missouri, North Dakota and Montana, and expanded their control of the Senate, handing Republicans a string of stinging defeats for the second campaign season in a row.

With the concession of Representative Rick Berg, Republican of North Dakota, to Heidi Heitkamp, a Democrat, in the last outstanding Senate race, Democrats secured 55 seats, assuming independent former Gov. Angus King of Maine sides with them next year. That is a two-seat gain from the current Senate balance of power, a remarkable outcome for a Senate fight that was once expected to end with a Republican majority.

Senate leaders declared that their strong showing must be a signal to Republicans to come to the table to deal with the nation’s intractable problems, including the “fiscal cliff” facing Congress in January.

“Now that the election is over, it’s time to put politics aside and work together to find solutions,” said Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader. “The strategy of obstruction, gridlock and delay was soundly rejected by the American people. Now they are looking to us for solutions.”

In Indiana, Representative Joe Donnelly did what had seemed impossible by taking a Senate seat for the Democrats in a heavily Republican state, just weeks after his opponent, State Treasurer Richard Mourdock, said conception by rape was God’s will.

Senator Claire McCaskill of Missouri, a Democrat once considered the Senate’s most endangered incumbent, beat Representative Todd Akin, who seemingly sank his campaign when he said women who are victims of “legitimate rape” would not get pregnant.

In Massachusetts, Elizabeth Warren, a Harvard professor, swept from power Senator Scott P. Brown, a Republican whose surprise victory in January 2010 heralded the coming of the Tea Party wave. In Virginia, former Gov. Tim Kaine triumphed over another former governor, George Allen.

Democrats also scored a narrow victory in Montana, as Senator Jon Tester — one of the party’s most endangered incumbents — beat Representative Denny Rehberg, in what was believed to be the most expensive race in the state’s history.

Those Democratic triumphs followed quick wins in Connecticut, Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania, all states where Republicans had harbored ambitions of victory that would propel them to a Senate majority for the first time since 2006.

Republicans lost another state when former Gov. Angus King Jr. of Maine, an independent, won his race to succeed Senator Olympia J. Snowe, a moderate who is retiring. Mr. King has yet to say which party he will caucus with next year, but he had warned Republicans and Democrats that his treatment during the campaign would bear on that decision. National Republicans and their “super PAC” allies responded by pummeling him with negative advertisements that did little to shake his lead.

“We said we’d defend all of our seats and would put half of their seats in play,” said Senator Patty Murray of Washington, the chairwoman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, who took that job last year when others had refused it.

Photo

Senator Sherrod Brown, an Ohio Democrat, acknowledged supporters in Columbus on Tuesday after holding on to a seat that the Republicans had coveted.Credit
Matt Sullivan/Reuters

“No one believed me,” she said, “but we did just that.”

The Senate campaigns of 2012 will be remembered for the sudden salience of rape as a destructive political subject and a Democratic surge in a year once expected to be the party’s Waterloo. Two years after Tea Party-backed candidates in Colorado, Delaware and Nevada fumbled away Republican chances at Senate control, a new crop of conservatives appeared to do the same thing. That will surely raise new questions about the failure of Washington Republicans to control a right flank in their grass roots.

“They’re going to have to decide whether they want to be in the majority or the minority,” Senator Snowe said. “It simply doesn’t make sense if Republicans decide they’re going to drive an ideological agenda as opposed to a practical agenda that is aligned with the principles of our roots.”

Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio held off Josh Mandel, the Republican state treasurer, weathering an onslaught of negative advertising from outside groups to keep a seat for Democrats in a presidential battleground that Republicans were counting on.

In New York, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, a Democrat, cruised to re-election. Senator Robert Menendez, Democrat of New Jersey, was also easily re-elected.

The results suggested that for the second consecutive election cycle, Republicans’ high hopes for a takeover of the Senate were dashed in large part by their own candidates. In 2010 and 2012, the disappointment could be laid at the feet of a very conservative Republican primary electorate that was determined to sweep out the party’s centrists.

Video

Election Night 2012: Brown vs. Warren

The Massachusetts Senate race between Scott Brown and Elizabeth Warren is one of the hardest fought and certainly most expensive Senate races in the country.

Democrats started the cycle with 23 seats to defend and the Republicans 10, an imbalance produced by the Democratic sweep of 2006. With only a three-seat majority for the Democrats, including two independents who caucused with them, holding on to control of the chamber seemed like an impossible task.

To defend some of the seats in heavily Republican states where Democrats were retiring, the party recruited talented candidates like Heidi Heitkamp, a former North Dakota secretary of state. They also pulled in strong candidates in Arizona, Indiana and Massachusetts, forcing the Republicans to defend seats across a broader map in a year that was supposed to be all offense.

More important, the Tea Party wave that began in 2010 kept rolling early this year, again threatening the Republicans’ chances for a majority. In 2010, primary voters in Colorado, Delaware and Nevada selected Tea Party-backed conservatives, who may have wrecked the party’s hopes.

This time, conservatives defeated Senator Richard G. Lugar of Indiana, a Republican veteran who was expected to walk to re-election. Instead, they nominated Indiana’s far more conservative treasurer, Mr. Mourdock, turning the general election into a fight.

Republican primary voters in Missouri chose Mr. Akin, the most conservative candidate in the field, to challenge Ms. McCaskill.

Republican fights between grass-roots conservatives and party-backed candidates led to prolonged and expensive primaries in Arizona and Wisconsin as well. In both cases, the party’s preferred candidate prevailed but emerged battered and broke.

Michael N. Castle, a moderate Republican and former congressman from Delaware, pointed to Ted Cruz, the Tea Party-backed Republican in Texas who coasted to victory in the race for the Senate seat being vacated by Kay Bailey Hutchison. “They can do that in Texas — that’s fine,” said Mr. Castle, who lost a Senate primary in 2010 to Christine O’Donnell, who was backed by the Tea Party and then lost in the general election. “But it gets a lot tougher in Indiana or Delaware.”

He added, “The Republican Party as a whole needs to be more understanding about what can fit into the different pockets of a diverse country.”

A version of this article appears in print on November 7, 2012, on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Joining Indiana,
Massachusetts
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